


wolf on a leash

by quadrille



Category: Altered Carbon (TV)
Genre: Bodyguard, Character Study, Dominance, F/M, Hate Sex, Mildly Dubious Consent, Power Dynamics, Power Play, Rival Relationship, Sleeves (Altered Carbon), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23372599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: “Tell me. What bothers you more: that a Harlan's giving you commands, or that you're obeying them?”“I prefer my superiors to earn their title, not be born to it.”“Power isn't something you earn, it's something you take. Until you understand that, you'll never see the bigger picture.”
Relationships: Danica Harlan/Jaeger | Ivan Carrera
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	wolf on a leash

**Author's Note:**

> look......... i just needed some fic focusing on my queen danica harlan and her stepping on men

Danica Harlan is her father’s daughter in every way that counts, including the way that eventually killed him.

When she executes the coup within her traitorous council, Carrera is the only one in the room who actually sees and understands what’s happening. She’s wearing a prim, satisfied smirk while the others panic: a herd of frightened sheep, and Carrera the predator at the center of them, frustrated and stewing.

But she’s leashed the wolf.

Seething anger is tightening his jaw. It makes her want to reach out and pat his cheek patronisingly, right above the vein that’s pulsing in his neck. He might bite her hand off.

Danica can see the man biting back what he actually wants to call her, whichever insults are burning on his tongue: cold-hearted bitch, serpent, _politician_. Between his trigger-calloused hands and custom combat sleeve, he’s a killer, and probably derides her job and very existence — but her hands are bloodied too.

> Kemp’s dissidents, a false cause but with real believers perishing in the trenches.
> 
> The archaeologues, hunted down one-by-one in the night, rounded up and executed.
> 
> Technicians strapped to a rocket, burning. Their screams buried behind the celebratory music.
> 
> Her father, and a bullet personally delivered right through his cortical stack. One of the only times she pulled the trigger herself.

  
She knows that the Praetorians have quite literally been spliced with _canis lupus_ DNA — because of course she’d already run scans on the troops that would be marching up and down her streets, their boots tracking mud in her pristine gubernatorial hallways. Colonel Carrera likes to think of himself as the only wolf in the room. But if so, then Danica Harlan is merely wearing sheep’s clothing: she smiles prettily, works the angles, shakes hands. Her father’s friends have always underestimated her. Haven’t seen her as a threat. Because she’s a woman, because she’s her father’s daughter, little Danica, but she’s simply been biding her time.

In the end, though, Carrera is so very obedient.

He’s so goddamned well-trained and loyal to the Protectorate and its rules that he’ll even take orders from _her_ , though she can see how much it pains him. “You’re my bodyguard for the evening, Carrera,” she announces, and he grinds his teeth so hard she almost imagines she can hear the snap.

She tasks him with working event security, and he bears it with barely-constrained rage. They’re standing at the corner of a party, while she schmoozes every millionaire and donor and artist who comes up for a minute of her time and attention. Carrera haunts her footsteps; he doesn’t drink.

After a couple hours of this, though, she’s getting bored and her patience is frayed and Stone’s already got all the scheduling in hand. She’s done her networking and laid the foundations. The rest will be one-on-one negotiations, follow-up meetings. Her ONI has been chiming with meeting requests all night, and she’s finally muted them.

“Come along,” she says, and walks right out of the busy hall. After a brief pause, there’s the sound of Carrera’s boots following. The doors seal shut behind them and she takes him away from the noise of the banquet, to a side room with her private bar, its well-stocked cabinets and gleaming glass tables. The man remains glowering by the doorway.

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want a drink?” Danica asks, uncorking a bottle and setting out glasses. “Some delicious báijiǔ from New Beijing. More expensive and far better than whatever they serve in the mess. They don’t let you out to have much fun, do they?”

“Fun is irrelevant. I’m on the clock.”

“Certainly.” She leans back against the wall, raises her glass to her red-painted lips, surveys him over the edge. She’s looked into the colonel’s history (or telling lack thereof) with her far-reaching resources. Wherever he came from, Carrera is a weapon that only exists to sit on a shelf, then be thawed when the Protectorate needs him, then be put back down again. All restrained strength, tightly-wound like a spring sitting on a hair-trigger. Shoulders taut in that dense body armour. Danica has never seen him wear anything else. She wonders, vaguely bored, if he even owns any other clothing or casual attire. Wonders _what_ they’re all wearing under that Wedge armour.

(She has, occasionally, considered asking Jarek to grow a very particular synthetic clone and wear it for an evening. The man at the needlecasting station had been similar enough: dark hair, bearded jaw. To his discredit, Jarek hadn’t realised who the man actually resembled.)

“Have a seat, Carrera.” When he hesitates, she adds, “You do answer to me now, remember.”

He finally steps forward at a prowl, and plants himself in one of the chairs like he’s girding for an interrogation. And perhaps he’s not far-off in expecting it. They’ve been at odds ever since he landed boots on her planet, both of them jockeying for power and authority until she played her cards with Provision 532, imposed martial law, got him under her thumb.

She quite enjoys having him there.

She drains the rest of her liquor, sets her glass delicately aside, and then suddenly strides forward and perches on the edge of Carrera’s lap instead. His expression flickers with startled surprise — one of the first emotions she’s seen out of the Praetorian that isn’t barely-concealed irritation — but then he remains stubbornly still, hands at his sides, chin tipped high. _Marvelous_ , she thinks.

Danica leans in close, until she can look right into his eyes. “You know, I’ve wondered. Are these combat sleeves actually fully-functioning? Or does the Protectorate find it unnecessary? Do they try to eliminate all _distractions_ from your body?” Testing her point, she bucks her hips and shifts on his lap.

“Or are you defective?”

She’s answered gratifyingly with an angry growl, Carrera’s hands tightening on her hips and he leans forward to kiss her, fiercely, as if to prove a point. In return, she bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. He stands up, carries her with him, and she feels the thrill of all that coiled power in the combat sleeve — he could tear her apart if he wanted, just snap her neck — but Ivan Carrera is a clockwork soldier who follows the proper procedures, and murdering the legitimate governor of Harlan’s World would somewhat conflict with the mission brief.

Fucking her or getting fucked by her, on the other hand, likely doesn’t matter.  


* * *

This is not a tender moment.

Danica didn’t choose him for his soft touch. She chose him for the crackling angry energy that’s always buzzing between them, for those bloodied hands, for the sense of barely-restrained violence. For the satisfaction of taming said violence. Shoving him backwards onto the bed, climbing on top of him.

* * *

  
A week later, the colonel is holed up in one of the cells beneath the governor’s residence.

Before she enters, she tilts her head slightly in a wordless gesture, and Stone knows to retreat down the hallway with the guards, leaving her to saunter into the prison cell alone. All swaggering confidence, even when she’s coming for assistance.

Not to _ask_ for help, but to demand. To negotiate. To murmur the things she thinks he wants to hear, like a serpent with a poisoned tongue, and Carrera’s jaw tightens even further while she talks.

He still doesn’t like her. Is even more furious with her, in fact, having learned about the war she manufactured.

She couldn’t give a single damn.

But simply giving him orders won’t work anymore. She has to dangle something else in front of him, and she has an idea what might work instead: pride, and whatever bizarre familial relationship he has with that envoy clone.

Danica leans in close to his seat on the bare bench, her hand planted possessively on the man’s shoulder, her voice against his ear. She feels him go rigid at her touch. She remembers the scrape of his beard against her thighs, the bruises left on her hips by his rough hands. Her finally finding out how to disassemble that armour and reach warm bare skin, carved statuesque muscle. (The Protectorate can afford to grow the best.)

But it’s utterly irrelevant right now, with her city and planet in crisis, and Quellcrist Falconer and the Last Envoy on the loose. And so Danica neatly compartmentalises and packs away those thoughts, like flipping off a switch, like it never happened. She suspects he’s just as good at doing that, too. The colonel stares levelly at her, and there’s no hint of desire in those hazel eyes. She doesn’t need him for stress relief anymore either, the entertainment like a cat toying with its food.

No, right _now_ she simply needs him and his goddamned son to go get this clusterfuck back under control.

“I know what you want… Jaeger,” Danica says, and she sees the glint of recognition and faint surprise in his eyes.

And she cuts him a deal.

She is, after all, her father’s daughter.


End file.
